


Don't Make Promises When the Trees are Listening

by Actually_Crowley



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Childhood Memories, Fae & Fairies, M/M, Memory Loss, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 05:52:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18654235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Actually_Crowley/pseuds/Actually_Crowley
Summary: Newton returns to a forest he barely remembers visiting as a boy while spending three weeks with his father and uncle in his old childhood home.  Without warning, he's attacked by a stag, but before he's badly hurt, he's rescued by a strange, thin man with antlers on his head.  The blessing turns into a curse when he learns that he was only saved because the forest won't let him leave.  He has a promise to keep.If only he could remember what it was.





	Don't Make Promises When the Trees are Listening

_There were dirty knees in his immediate sight as he breathed in the deep scent of grass and pine.  One of those knees was capped with a ninja turtle bandaid, and he was wearing brightly colored, neon sneakers.  He could hear a creek babbling somewhere in the distance, and he felt a gentle breeze. It sounded and smelled of nature, but the most prominent sound was a voice.  It was soft. It sounded English and young. And it sounded happy._

_“And here,” said the voice, as a thin finger tapped a book just to the right of where he was looking.  “You call them ‘the Pleiades’ I believe. If you look, it’s just there.”_

_He watched that same, thin hand redirect his attention above them.  He stared up and found a patch of bright stars against the blue of the night sky, beaming down on them._

_“Do you see them?”_

_“They’re so pretty,” He heard himself say.  He turned away from the sky and tried to peer at the face belonging to the voice, but he lost his focus._

_“It’s a good job the moon isn’t out tonight.  It’s much easier to see the stars when she isn’t in the way.”  The soft voice sounded amused._

_He felt a laugh bubble in his chest._

_Suddenly he was lying down in the grass, staring back up at the sky again.  He didn’t remember when he got that way, but there was a hand in his, trembling.  “You shouldn’t promise such things… not when the trees are listening,” The voice whispered._

_“I’ll promise whatever I like!” He heard himself declare._

_Promise what?_

_Then there was a snap of a branch.  Then there was panic._

_He was moving as fast as his legs could carry him, hearing a ringing echo in his ears that sounded a lot like the quiet voice shouting.  “Run!” They begged, terrified in his ears. And he did. He ran._

_And ran._

_And dared to look back, just in time to see a massive stag stumbling, antlers tangling within the thin trunks of the trees it had previously been weaving through with ease.  He turned away from it and kept going._

_His foot snagged a root._

_The wall of water of the rushing river came up to meet him._

~

Newt jerked awake as the dull sound of the in-flight movie he’d been sleeping through was interrupted by the louder-set voice of one of the flight attendants.  “ _Ladies and gentlemen, as we start our descent, please make sure your seat backs and tray tables are in their full upright position.  Make sure your seat belt is securely fastened and all carry-on luggage is stowed underneath the seat in front of you or in the overhead bins.  Thank you._ ”

Newt blinked away the heavy sleep from his eyes and groaned as the message was repeated again in German, rubbing his head from where it had been resting against the window.  He shoved his fingers into his eyes, pushing his glasses up away from his nose and rubbing vigorously.

“Easy there, son.  Those eyes don’t need to get any worse.”  His father was putting up his table to his right, as was the woman who’d joined their row in the aisle seat.  “Sleep well?”

Newt dropped his hands and his glasses landed lopsided back onto his face.  “Uh. Yeah, I think.” He stared out at the clouds as they descended through them.  The clouds eventually parted and gave way to the view of Berlin below. In the far distance, faded in the fog, was the expanse of forest that overtook anywhere there wasn’t field or town or city.  “I had a weird dream s’all.”

The flight descended, and Newt put the poor movie out of its misery.  He coiled his headphones away and sat back as the distant city grew closer and closer until it finally passed the perspective of a miniature.  Newt jabbed his elbow into his father’s side as they approached the runway and earned a smirk as he threw his arms into the air. Jacob laughed and did the same as both men held their hands high as the plane finally touched down, repeating a tradition they’ve held onto since as long as Newt could remember.

Newt laughed with Jacob as another announcement spilled into the cabin to inform everyone about the cloudy weather and chilly temperature.  Newton snickered at it and leaned into his seat as Jacob turned his phone back on. “Good ol’ German spring. You’d think by now it’d catch up with the rest of this latitude.”

“Oh, it’s not that much warmer in Boston and you know it.”

“Uh, I’m sorry, we left near seventies and went head first into fifties, dude.”  Newt looked out the window as they coasted in toward the airport.

Jacob laughed again and sent off a text.  “You’re back in the motherland, Newt. Try twenties to a cozy twelve degrees.”

“Yeah, yeah.”  Newt waved him off.  “How many texts did Illia send you?”

“We’re up to eight.”

Newt laughed.  “I think some wires got crossed and I got my patience from him.”

The plane settled into its gate, and Newt and Jacob collected their carry ons and escaped the crowded plane.  They chatted about nothing important on their way through customs. Jacob had apparently stolen Newt’s last piece of gum while he slept through ‘The Croods’, but Newt couldn’t really hold it against him, because Newt had stolen the rest of Jacob’s pretzels while he slept through the the third installment of ‘Fast and Furious’ earlier in the flight.

The two of them argued over who owed who as they made their way to the gate’s exit, but the fight didn’t last.  As soon as they made it to the airport proper, the jovial voice of Newton’s uncle Illia. “There are my boys! Willkommen zuhause!”

Newt spotted the man a good five people away and beamed, bobbing and weaving through the crowd to throw his arms around him.  “Danke, Illia!”

Illia’s arms circled him and lifted Newt clear off the floor in a bear hug to Newt’s laughter.  “Ah! You’re too damn light!” He said, setting Newt down again. “We’ll fix that right up. How long’s it been since you’ve had a good Rouladen?”

Newt gave a soft gasp.  “Oh man, you’d better be able to cash that check.”

“Are you calling me a liar, you brat?”  Illia caught him in a headlock and ruffled his already messy hair.  Newt cackled in his hold.

Jacob eventually muscled Newton out of the way and hugged his brother as tightly as Illia hugged him in return, and Newton smiled.  Their family was always a war of who could hug the other better, and there was no battle he was more than happy to fight.

Illia took the post of driving them back to his house, where they had both once lived with him in the countryside.  Jacob had passed out as soon as he was buckled into the passenger seat, but Newton stretched his legs out in the backseat and stared out the window as the lights of the city gave way to trees.  The brush got thicker, and the trees grew denser, and eventually the skinny pine trees of the city outskirts began to thicken with spruce. He couldn’t smell it yet, because Illia always kept a little vanilla air freshener dangling from his rearview mirror.  But with the memory of the strange dream on the flight so fresh, the scent of the forest hung in his nose. It beckoned. Newt shivered.

“Fifth PhD, huh?” Came a question from the driver’s seat.

Newton blinked away from the woods and turned to the back of Illia’s head.  “Uh, yeah. Thinking about starting a sixth next year.”

Illia chuckled.  “You ought to slow down a little.  I know that mind of yours is always running at top speed, but it needs to rest once in a while.”

Newt smiled and leaned his arm against the door.  “You know my head doesn’t like to work that way.”

“You’ve just gotta find a way to trick it into calming down.  Give it something else to focus on.” Illia glanced at him in the rearview mirror.  “See, you’re still looking at those trees. Same look you gave that old forest when you moved away, too.  Like it had answers.”

Newt arched a brow at him.  “You say that like you think I have questions.”

“Don’t you?”  Illia laughed again.  “You should go for a walk after dinner.  You should still have about an hour before the sun sets, and I know you know those woods like the back of your hand still.”

“Oh, nah.  No way man, I’m not nearly as sprightly as I used to be.”

“Didn’t you send me photos of you rock climbing when you brought your students on a dig with you?”

Newton laughed.  “Uh okay, poor example.  Those were well timed photos, I lost my grip twice, and I got two lacrosse players to haul my ass up to the top by the end of the climb.”

Illia laughed again.  “Oh come on. What are the woods gonna do to you?  Bite?”

Newt’s smile slowly shifted away.  The odd dream with the furious stag roared to the forefront of his mind again, and he looked back out the window, staring a little harder at the trees.  “...Probably nothing good.”

~

The drive to Illia’s house was short, and Jacob muttered as he was roused from his nap to help with the luggage.  Newt shouldered most of it, earning a ‘not sprightly my ass’ from his uncle, and they were unpacked into their old rooms (barely touched and kept neat and dusted) by the time Illia was finished with dinner.

Stories and jokes and laughter were traded over the pane of the table and the smell of good food, and Illia continued to fire congratulations at Newton for his accomplishments.  It wasn’t as if Illia hadn’t been there for most of them; usually when they got together as a family, Illia flew to Boston and spent a month showering Newt with praise and demands that he take a goddamn break before he fell over.  They’d gone on one vacation together once in Hong Kong where Newton had tracked down and befriended a tattoo artist and all but refused to ever go to another artist ever again, but besides that, most of their gatherings had been in the states until now.  Newton had almost forgotten what it was like to live here.

But he sure did forget the woods.  If he were honest, the strange dream about the clearing was the only mental proof he had that he’d been in there before.  He wondered to himself if maybe he’d simply grown up and pushed all of those memories out of his head. It must not have been very eventful if he could barely recall any of his time there.

But what of that voice?  Who had that been? Had he made a friend in the woods that he was just remembering now that he was finally visiting again after all these years?  Or was it all just something concocted in his head? Dreams were odd, and sometimes there was no explaining them. He knew that. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that it meant something.  Something important. Something he was _missing._

“Newt?”

Newton blinked and turned back to the table.  He’d finished his food and apparently had spaced out, staring out toward the back door of the cabin.  Both Jacob and Illia were looking at him.

“Where’d you go, son?” Jacob asked.

Newt shrugged.  “Oh, nowhere. Must just be the jetlag finally kicking in.”  He stood up and lifted his empty plate. “I’m gonna go dunk my head in the sink and see if that helps.”

“Tap’s still running cold, so that should do the trick!”  Illia laughed and stood after him, snagging the dish from him.  “Go get pretty, I got your plate.”

“Thanks Illia.”  Newt turned away from them and headed for the bathroom.

The water was blissfully as cold as Illia promised as Newt ran the tap and splashed it onto his face.  He toweled off and stood up, gripping the sides of the sink and closing his eyes, breathing out a long sigh.  The tap kept running. The steady noise filled his ears, and Newton tried to clear his head.

He needed to relax.  The woods were just the woods.  This was supposed to be family time, and he needed to focus on that.  There was no puzzle to solve and no experiments to perform. He was free to do whatever he wanted for the next three weeks.

Before he could continue his train of thought, he realised that the sound of tap water flowing seemed to have been replaced with something else-- something natural.  He swore he could hear the babbling creek.

“ _You’ll forget me, too.  It’s all right. They all do, it’s not your fault._ ”

Newton’s eyes snapped open, and he jerked away from the sink.  The sound of the faucet returned and Newt stared at himself in the mirror for a long, hard second.

“Oh for fuck’s sake.”

He left the bathroom quicker than he’d meant and made his way past his dad and uncle for the entryway, shoving his feet back into the shoes he’d previously kicked off.  Illia grinned after him. “Where you headed, Newt?”

Newt gave him a squint.  “I’m taking a walk. Gonna see if it’ll clear the fog from my head.”

Jacob nodded after him.  “All right, but don’t be too late.  Sun’s gonna be down pretty soon.”

“Dude, I’m three times the age I was last time I did this, I think I can handle a little darkness.”  Newt fished his phone (fully charged during the flight) out of his pocket. “I’ve got a flashlight, compass, _and_ GPS.  I’m golden.”

Jacob shook his head.  “Just don’t be out much past, all right?  It’s been a while since you’ve been out in those woods, and I don’t want you getting hurt.”

Newton nodded as he finished tying his boots.  “I’ll be safe dad, I promise.” He walked over to him and gave him a tight, winning hug.  “Love you. I’ll be back.”

“You’d better,” Jacob added.

Newt moved onto Illia and tried to ignore his knowing look.  “Shut up.”

Illia snickered again and hugged him anyway.  “Good luck, Newt.”

“Thanks.”

Newt tucked his phone away in his pocket and threw his warm coat back on.  He left the cabin through the back door and shut it behind him, turning out towards the tree line at the bottom of the hill.  He took a slow breath of crisp air and stuffed his hands into his pockets, marching down the grassy decline. At the bottom, there was a stream rushing by.  It really wasn’t much of one, and Illia had constructed a stone bridge across it decades ago that was still holding strong. It was overgrown at the entrances with grass and flowers and weeds, but if anything it seemed to give it more life and character.  Newton smiled at it as he stepped onto it, leaning on the rail and staring down into the water that probably didn’t even come up past his knees. He remembered the stream feeling significantly larger when he was young, but a lot of things changed with age.  Maybe the wonder that was this forest would have changed for him as well? He gave the water another wistful glance and turned to the woods again. He took a breath. He crossed the bridge.

This was just a walk.  It was just a walk to prove to himself that there was nothing interesting to be found in the woods.  That was all. He figured if he repeated it to himself enough times, it would be true.

On the one hand, Newton felt bad that he might actually have forgotten someone.  If the memory in the bathroom was in fact a memory, that alone said as much. But also he’d not been here for twenty years, and with his head going a million miles a minute at all times, he was bound to forget about people he wasn’t able to contact.  Would he even be able to find this person he spoke to in the woods? Did they even still live there? Who would live in the woods like this in the first place? He couldn’t remember ever seeing another house out there, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t possible.

The light was sinking as he walked, but he knew he still had plenty of time.  Despite not remembering his usual path, he strolled through the trees like he knew the place, just as Illia had thought.  It felt as though his feet knew these woods better than his head. Newt knew that muscle memory was a thing, but this was just ridiculous.  Still, he let them lead. Maybe they knew what they were doing.

He let his mind wander so much that he accidently bumped into one of the larger pine trees.  “Op. Sorry,” He said, patting the tree.

Newt had never known where his habit of talking to plants came from.  He remembered asking trees for the leaves they dropped when he was a boy, begged the garden he helped his father with to grow big and strong, and up through adulthood, he’d held full, one-sided conversations with the succulents he kept in his home and office.  He’d always done it. He wondered now if maybe growing up next to this place was why.

Maybe he hadn’t actually made a friend when he was little.  Maybe he’d just been talking to a tree.

Newt snorted at the thought.  Somehow that was hilariously plausible.

Before he knew it, he’d suddenly found a clearing that felt familiar.  He looked around it for any signs of life and found nothing but the occasional squirrel on the ground and bird flitting through the sky-

The sky was cloudless.  Newt’s eyes widened as he looked up into the twilit sky to take in the deep colors and the distant, twinkling lights.  The sun had sunk further than he had thought, earlier than it should have been meant to, and the sky was beginning to fill with stars.

He knew that they were a good distance from the city, but there still should have been much more light pollution out here than there seemed to be.  The sun was down, but the sky was _bright_ and the stars were shining as bright as the full moon might have done had it been anywhere in sight.

Newton felt in awe but uneasy.  Where had the clouds gone? It had been overcast as hell when he started his walk; there was no way the sky could have cleared up so quickly.  The sound of the nearby creek filled Newton’s ears.

“ _I could never forget you!  I won’t!_ ”

Newt shook his head and dropped his gaze to the ground.  “Gah, what the hell…?” He gripped his head and squeezed his eyes shut.  “This is stupid. You’re being stupid, Newt.” He opened his eyes again and looked back up into the beautiful sky, trying to calm down.

A cluster of stars caught his attention as he was trying to clear his head.  It was as familiar as the clearing. Newton swallowed his nerves and kept his wide gaze on the cluster.  “...Pleiades…” He whispered to himself.

That didn’t make any sense.  It was late April; the Pleiades weren’t supposed to be that high in the sky until the winter months.

Something was wrong.

Newton felt his breath coming up short as he tore his eyes away from the sky and locked them on the ground.  This wasn’t right. Something had gone terribly wrong, and he had to get back. Had he fallen somewhere and hit his head?  Oh god, had the bridge not held, and he was in the stream right now? What if he was drowning?

He wasn’t able to make it back the way he came.  Ten steps from the trees leading home, he heard the telltale sound of twigs snapping beneath a heavy weight.  He froze. Slowly, he lifted his gaze from the ground, and his eyes locked with that of a massive-- _too_ massive-- stag.  It stood taller than Newt, and its antlers even higher.  It stared him down like he’d just insulted its life’s work by just existing.  Its antlers should not have been that big. For as large of a buck as it was, those antlers should have long since fallen off for the season.  But there they were, big and strong, and on the head of a very territorial looking specimen.

Newt’s throat was dry.  “H-... Hey there big guy.  I-... I was just leaving. I swear.”

The beast of a deer huffed.  Newt flinched.

Then it stepped out of the trees with its antlers angled downward, directly toward Newton.  It charged. Newton lept out of the way with barely a second to spare. “ _Shit!_ ”  He scrambled to his feet from where he landed and darted into the woods as fast as he could.

He could barely hear anything but his own breathing and his footsteps as he ran.  There was blood pounding in his ears, but he had to try and keep track of where the stag was.  He flickered his attention behind him and watched the massive thing as it dodged trees with expertise in its chase.  No matter which way he went, it seemed like it was able to keep up with him.

“This is a nightmare- ha- this is a fucking nightmare!”  He managed, breathing hard. “Wake up, Newt, _wake up!_ ”

He ran in what he had known to be the direction of the stream and home, but the trees kept on going.  At first he thought maybe he was misjudging how far in he really was, but as he was losing speed and hope, he knew that these trees couldn’t have gone on this far.  Had he gone the wrong way somehow? How did he get so turned around?

He fumbled with his pocket to pull out his phone, but he didn’t even get it past the lip of his pocket before he lost his footing and flew to the ground.  “ _Fuck!_ ”  Hand stuck in his pocket, he only managed to get his other hand down to brace his fall, but it didn’t help much.  His head bounced off the dirt and made his vision swim, and his arm sang with pain. His glasses had flown from his head and landed _somewhere_ , but he couldn’t tell where.  He struggled to focus and flipped around to try and find the stag again, and it stood blurry, roaring and rearing back, ten feet away.  “Sh-shit. Shit, _shit, shit!_ ”  He kicked at the ground to back away from it, dizzy from falling, winded from running, and bleary with pain.  Was he about to die here? Did he have some sort of premonition on the plane?

Or was he already dead?

When the stag’s hooves touched ground again, Newton squeezed his eyes shut tight and braced himself, curling into as tight a ball as he could muster.  Whatever was about to happen, he didn’t want to see it.

“ _Enough!_ ”  There was a rustling of leaves (that shouldn’t be in the ground this time of year), and fast footsteps.  “Do not harm him, Dietrich!”

Newton unfurled only the slightest bit and took in, at first, the fuzzy silhouette of a second set of antlers--

Atop the head of a man.

He stood between Newt and the stag, staring the beast down as it paced before him, shaking its head in frustration.  It wanted to gore something. It wanted to gore Newt. His vision was fluttering and filling with tears. What the fuck was happening?

“You cannot touch him!  He’s bound to the forest, he is off limits!”  The man spoke again, but his voice was sounding farther and farther away.  “Go and get father. I’ve got _him._ ”

The stag made a noise in complaint.  But then, against all odds, it turned around and pranced off into the deeper woods.

Newton could feel his breath coming up short.  His lungs didn’t want to take in enough air. His terror was clouding everything and the pain made it hard to stay upright.  He watched the other man deflate and turn slowly toward him, the antlers following his head. He had a thin, gaunt face and a mouth that must have frowned far too often.  His dark eyes looked sad as they took in Newton’s form.

“...You fool,” The man whispered.  “You weren’t supposed to come _back._ ”

The last thing Newton saw before succumbing to unconsciousness was the form of the thin man leaning down toward him.

Then everything went dark.  Everything went quiet.

At least, if this was dying, it was peaceful.

~

**Author's Note:**

> I am still working on N.exe! Don't panic. I've just been dealing with the absolute worst writer's block I've had in two years, and I'm trying to force myself out of it. If this seems jerky or rushed, that's probably why, and it'll likely get a revamp way later. But for now, please enjoy the beginning of this massive thing that spawned from the image of antlered Hermann I couldn't get out of my head.


End file.
